Offers, such as coupons, deals, discounts, rewards, etc., are often used by merchants, manufacturers, retailers, and other entities to increase consumer business. Merchants may hope to gain return customers who redeem an offer at their store, or may hope that customers shop at their store to redeem an offer and then buy additional products that recoup any potential loss of profits from the offer. Manufacturers may hope to gain a loyal customer who will provide repeat business following the purchase of a product using an offer.
While it may generally be of interest for a merchant or manufacturer to gain as large of a customer base as possible, the wide distribution of offers may require significant resources and carry a large expense. As a result, offers are often distributed to particular groups of consumers considered to be more likely to redeem an offer and/or return to the store or product afterwards, identified using targeting techniques, such as based on consumer demographics and/or transaction data. To this end, merchants and manufacturers, and/or offer distributers working on behalf or to the advantage of the merchants and manufacturers, may spend considerable time and resources to identify ideal consumers for the receipt of offers.
However, in many instances, offers distributed to consumers are not exclusive to the consumer. In such instances, the specifically-targeted consumer may pass the offer on to a different consumer that is outside of the merchant or manufacturer's target market. This may result in a consumer that is unlikely to be a repeat customer redeeming an offer, which may financially hurt the merchant in cases where a merchant may accept a loss for redemption of an offer in the hope of eventual returns through repeat business.
In an effort to provide offers that are exclusive to specific consumers, some merchants have begun to provide offers to consumers via loyalty programs. In such programs, the merchant may associate offers with a specific consumer, which may then be redeemed by only that consumer after providing proof of their loyalty account. However, such a system requires consumers to previously register with the merchant to obtain a loyalty account, and thus is inadequate for providing offers to first-time consumers. In addition, such systems are ineffective for manufacturers who wish to provide offers to consumers for redemption at multiple merchants. In order to provide consumer-exclusive offers to consumers that may be redeemed at multiple merchants, some manufacturers have begun providing offers where each distributed offer has a unique identifier or redemption code. However, such offers may still be susceptible to being passed to other consumers as there are no controls on redemption.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution for the generating and distribution thereof of offers that are exclusive to a specific payment card associated with a consumer that may be redeemed exclusively by the use of that payment card at multiple merchants without relying on a closed loop system.